On Wednesday, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute, which houses the top-rated Kellog School of Science and Technology, created a new organism that contains two new genetic letters to the DNA structure: X and Y. The discovery was led by Chemist Floyd Romesberg. Because of this creation, they hope this to be the big breakthrough in medicine that current cells with the normal genetic code just cannot make.

With this new “alien” species differing from all living organisms on Earth, it supports the idea that it’s possible for life forms beyond our planet to have a completely different genetic code than species on this planet.

How researchers pulled this off was through implantation of two newly created nucleotides into a bacterium. All life on earth consists of the four basic genetic letters A, C, G, T. In this case, they used the common bacterium E. Coli, with surprising results. The newly created organism was able to reproduce and replicate the new X and Y nucleotides along with the natural genetic alphabet.

Despite the success of the “alien” species, a lot of ethical and philosophical implications about this breakthrough arose, like the idea of man playing god by creating new life forms.

Jim Thomas of ETC group said via e-mail, “the arrival of this unprecedented ‘alien’ life form could in time have far-reaching ethical, legal and regulatory implications.”

Thomas goes on to say that while scientists has made new ways to dabble in the fundamentals of life, the government hasn’t been able to throw together any assessment or regulation in the growing biological fields coming out of these new discoveries.

With new advancements in technology and science occurring all the time, we can talk about ideas of playing god and the morals that come along with it. But is that a reason not to innovate, for fear of the unknown?

Dr. Romeberg spells out no reason people should be alarmed. He states they essentially feed the artificial nucleotides to the the bacteria, and were it to escape or come into contact with a living organism, it wouldn’t have access to the synthetic material needed to survive and would either die or revert back to the basic DNA structure a normal bacteria is made of.

The use of an expanded alphabet in the genetic code has a possibility in breathroughs of new types of proteins not possible before. Such discoveries could be vital to cures once thought impossible. Scientists behind the discovery have already formed a company they intend to use as a way of testing and developing antibiotics, vaccines and other medicines.

At the moment, however, such thoughts are only ones of hope as many tests still need to be done. It’s still not sure whether such artificial nucleotides are able to even produce proteins.

New medicines aren’t the only positive that can come out of this; perhaps another piece to the still unsolved puzzle of life on earth and how it came to be could be answered. With some experimentation, it could shed some light as to why four nucleotides is the key number to all living life. Perhaps anymore won’t function as well as the current structure, and if that were the case, what a discovery this would still be. At least then we would have some answers to the seemingly never ending questions about our existence.

For more information on the new findings, it has been published online by the international journal of science site, nature.

Sources: NY Times Featured Image: SciFiScoop–You can follow all things Stephen on his twitter feed: @FinbeiusIII, where he babbles about all kinds of sense that the nonsense can’t sense. Say that five times fast.